What's missing seems to be any evidence that intelligence isn't being studied or that it is taboo. It seems like IQ tests are widely used and there is quite a bit of academic literature about the subject.
Well, just because IQ tests are widely used for individuals doesn't mean that researchers are using them to study IQ differences between different populations or why differences might exist.
Personally, I think that the idea that differences exist makes people very, very uncomfortable, and that this discomfort is at the heart of the taboo. Admitting that differences exist means that a small portion people have a big and critical advantage from birth. Unlike wealth or social standing, the IQ advantage will never go away, barring a catastrophic disease or accident.
It's clear that smart people have a huge advantage. While gifted athletes or gifted actors also have advantages, their gifts have a limited range of application. This statement isn't true of people who are cognitively gifted --- high cognitive ability can be applied in a huge range of areas.
I think that this is why our society is uncomfortable with the idea of cognitive giftedness and IQ in general. It's discomfiting to think that a small number of people can, simply because of the way they were born, have so many more options than others who are less intelligent.
US society has become more egalitarian over the last 150 years or so. I think it's natural that, as we decreasingly tolerate biases based on sex, race, and other similar factors, it's natural to want to extend opportunities (like a college education) to people who had previously been shut out for all the wrong reasons.
But I think we've made a mistake in how we apply that extension of opportunity. By pushing everyone to go to college and downplaying other options, we overlook the fact that some people just aren't suited to getting a BA. This isn't because they're Hispanic or female or poor.
It's because they just aren't smart enough. Yet somehow, this fact gets tangled up with ethnicity or sex or economic background and the real reasons for why Johnny really ought to be thinking about another career path get lost in the scuffle.
Then, on top of that, many, many people really don't want to admit that someone might not be smart enough to go to college, as though it was somehow stripping a person of opportunities. This is a very hard and painful thing to do, but if we're honest, we'll admit that those opportunities were never really there to begin with for some people, because some just don't have the ability for a college education.
Admitting that some people are smarter than others implicitly means that the less bright ones have fewer options in life. Our society, which has
always focused on opportunities for individuals, is uncomfortable with admitting this fact. It's hard to talk about equal opportunity when people with IQs over 120 or 130 have so many more options than everyone else. It's even harder when you know that the advantages are all internal, weren't earned, and won't go away. Again, this is all painful stuff for a society striving to be more egalitarian. But that doesn't make it less true.
Philosophically yours,
Val (who must go make a pie now; this isn't as well-written as I'd like and I may edit/expand later).
